vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image... who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator. . . . And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind.'* Doubtless as far back as the tower of Babel, when men were scattered on the face of the earth, each family carried with it part of the true religion. Being separated, each added on according to their tastes; hence diversity with a certain amount of similarity. God's children, however, adhered to His Word alone, and that revelation has continually been increased up to the close of the New Testament.

Christianity is essentially an intolerant religion. It admits of no equals, and brooks no rivals. The early Christians might have saved themselves much persecution if they would only have acknowledged their religion to be but one of many. The Pagans were quite willing to admit Christ into their Pantheon at Rome, but what irritated them so, was to be told that their impure heathenism was wrong, and that Christianity alone was right. The early Christians, inspired, guided, and directed by the Apostolic spirit,, died rather than admit the equality of other religions. Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.'†

Space will not permit of a more thorough investigation of the claims of the Bible. Many able writers ‡ have gone more thoroughly

I here take the opportunity of recommending the following books, to which I have been much indebted for many of the thoughts I have brought forward in this chapter: 'Infidelity; its Cause and Cure,' by Dr. Nelson, published by Geo. Routledge and Sons, Broadway, Ludgate, London; also Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation,' published by the Religious Tract Society; and 'Difficulties of Unbelief,' by Faber—a book, I fear, now out of print. † Acts iv. 12.

* Rom. i. 20.

into the subject, to whom I must refer any who doubt the fact. I have endeavoured to show that God has given man a revelation, and that it is not any of these followed by heathen religions. Moreover, that as the consciences of individual men differ so extremely, as well as the collective consciences or public opinion of different nations, we need something further. We need some unchanging and recognised authority to appeal to, and we find it here. 'Heaven and earth shall pass, but My word shall not pass away.'* 'All His commandments are sure. They stand fast (margin, are established) for ever and ever.'t 'For ever, O Lord, Thy word is settled in heaven.' 'The counsel of the Lord standeth for ever, the thoughts of His heart to all generations.'§ Our actions frequently fall short of what we know to be right, so that as the watch needs to be tested by the chronometer, our actions need to be tested by our consciences. But as the chronometer itself needs to be tested by the sun, so our consciences need to be tested by the light of God's Divine revelation.

There are many differences of opinion even among thinking men, so that the great questions for us to ask is not what this or that man thinks, or this or that collection of erring men, but 'What saith the Scripture?' The Bible¶ alone must be

Speaking of the effects of the work of Christ, who, it must be remembered, is the life and soul of the Bible, Canon Farrar says: 'It expelled cruelty; it curbed passion; it branded suicide; it punished and repressed an execrable infanticide; it drove the shameless impurities of heathendom into congenial darkness. There was hardly a class whose wrong it did not remedy. It rescued the gladiator; it freed the slave; it protected the captive; it nursed the sick; it sheltered the orphan; it elevated the woman; it shrouded as with a halo of sacred innocence the tender years of the child. In every region of life its ameliorating influence was felt. It changed pity from a vice into a virtue. It elevated poverty from a curse into a beatitude. It ennobled labour from a vulgarity into a dignity and a duty. It sanctified marriage from little more than a burdensome convention into little less than a blessed sacrament. It revealed for the first time the angelic beauty of a purity of which men had despaired, and of a meekness at which they had utterly scoffed. It created the very conception of * Mark xiii. 31. † Psa. cxi. 7. Psa. cxix. 89. § Psa. xxxiii. II.

accepted as the final court of appeal. Among all the changing things of earth, here at least is one thing which never changes. Wisely did the reformers of our National Church say, 'Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an Article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.** They saw from history, as well as from the Book of Revelation, that it was quite possible for the Churches even to go astray very far from the truth; so they wisely directed the generations to come to refer every disputed point to the Scriptures themselves.

There may be some things in the Bible, as St. Peter says, 'hard to be understood,' and difficult to reconcile with each other; but if we have sufficient evidence that the Bible, as a whole, is God's Word, we can easily afford to wait till that day when all things shall be made clear. It would indeed be strange were there no difficulties in the Scriptures, when there

charity, and broadened the limits of its obligations from the narrow circle of a neighbourhood to the widest horizons of the race. It cleansed the life, and elevated the soul of each individual man. And in all lands where it has moulded the characters of its true believers, it has created hearts so pure, and lives so peaceful, and homes so sweet, that it might seem as though those angels who had heralded its advent, had also whispered to every depressed and despairing sufferer among the sons of men, "Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye be as the wings of a dove, that is covered with silver wings, and her feathers like gold.' 'Others, if they can, and will, may see in such a work as this no Divine Providence, they may think it philosophical enlightenment to hold that Christianity and Christendom are adequately accounted for by the idle dreams of a noble self-deceiver, and the passionate hallucinations of a recovered demoniac. We persecute them not, we denounce them not, we judge them not; but we do say that unless life be a hollow mockery, there could have been no such miserable origin to the sole religion of the world, which holds the perfect balance between religion and morals, between meek submission and the pride of freedom, between the ideal and the real, between the inward and the outward, between modest stillness and heroic energy-nay, between the tenderest conservatism and the boldest plans of world-wide reformation."

* Article VI., Prayer Book. † 2 Peter iii. 16.

Dean Alford.

exist so many unsolved problems in everyday life. When finite minds like ours come into contact with the infinite mind of God, there must ever be certain depths the former cannot fathom.'*

If we take the Bible as God's Word, the question is what does it say on any given subject? Each one must decide this for himself, humbly searching for the truth, and seeking the aid of God's Holy Spirit, of whom our Saviour told His diciples, 'When He the Spirit of truth is come, He will guide you into all truth.' 'To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because they have no light in them.' Let us now proceed in the next chapter to ask what the Bible says of man's present condition in the sight of God?

* A story is told which if not very refined, is at least very characteristic of what capital is made of some of these difficulties, which exist only in theory, and not in practice, by a certain class of sceptical stump orators. A sceptical lecturer once appealed to his audience to ask if it was right that his body should be punished for sins twenty years hence, which he had committed twenty years ago, when scientific men say that the body changes once in every seven years. He alleged that the body to be punished would not be the same that committed the sins. Such an argument as this to an ignorant crowd would of course have great weight. After sitting down amid great applause, a gentleman, who was personally acquainted with him, got up, and said that before going further, he had an important piece of information to give them regarding the character of the lecturer, which was, that the lady who accompanied him as his wife had never been married to him. The lecturer at once indignantly denied the assertion, and added that the gentleman must have known it to be untrue, as he was actually present when the ceremony took place. The gentleman then quietly replied that he certainly had been present fifteen years before, when two persons remarkably like the lecturer and his wife had been married; but that in accordance with the lecturer's own reasonings, as their bodies had completely changed twice within that time, and no new ceremony had taken place, they could not be legally married! Many a fallacy can thus be exposed when treated in the reductio ad absurdum manner. Isa. viii. 20.

† John xvi. 13.

TH

CHAPTER III.

SIN.

'There is none righteous, no, not one.'-ROM. iii. 10.

If a man

HE Bible speaks with no uncertain sound when it tells us of the state of man in God's sight. No doubt the first step in the Christian life is to realise our fallen condition. We must first know ourselves to be lost sinners before we begin to think about the way of escape from their doom. were aroused in the middle of the night and told to escape, he would naturally ask, 'Why?' He does not know of any danger. But if told that the house was on fire, he would at once realize his position, and attempt to escape without questioning. so in spiritual things; once let a man know his state and realize his danger, and he at once becomes intensely in earnest to 'flee from the wrath to come.'* We all are sinners, and in danger of the punishment due to sinners, but all do not know it. It is quite possible for us, Sunday after Sunday, to denounce ourselves publicly as 'miserable sinners,' without in the least realizing the fact, or estimating the danger in which we are.

And

There can be no true 'joy and peace' in religion without a true realization of our standing in God's sight. Some may deceive themselves, and have a false peace, but sooner or later they will be undeceived. It is but the momentary false security of the man in a burning house, unconscious of any danger. A man may be very far gone in some deadly disease, and yet not * Matt. iii. 7.